The Quest to ‘Solve All Diseases’ with AI: Isomorphic Labs’ Max Jaderberg
After pioneering reinforcement learning breakthroughs at DeepMind with Capture the Flag and AlphaStar, Max Jaderberg aims to revolutionize drug discovery with AI as Chief AI Officer of Isomorphic Labs, which was spun out of DeepMind. He discusses how AlphaFold 3's diffusion-based architecture enables unprecedented understanding of molecular interactions, and why we're approaching a "Move 37 moment" in AI-powered drug design where models will surpass human intuition. Max shares his vision for general AI models that can solve all diseases, and the importance of developing agents that can learn to search through the whole potential design space.
Hosted by Stephanie Zhan, Sequoia capital
Mentioned in this episode:
Playing Atari with Deep Reinforcement Learning: Seminal 2013 paper on Reinforcement Learning
Capture the Flag: 2019 DeepMind paper on the emergence of cooperative agents
AlphaStar: 2019 DeepMind paper on attaining grandmaster level in StarCraft II using multi-agent RL
AlphaFold Server: Web interface for AlphaFold 3 model for non-commercial academic use
--------
55:40
Pricing in the AI Era: From Inputs to Outcomes, with Paid CEO Manny Medina
Former Outreach CEO Manny Medina discusses his new company Paid, which provides billing, pricing and margin management tools for AI companies. He explains why traditional SaaS pricing models don’t work for AI businesses, and breaks down emerging approaches like outcome-based and agent-based pricing. Manny shares why he believes focused AI applications targeting specific workflows will win over broad platforms, while emphasizing that AI companies need better tools to understand their unit economics and capture more value.
Hosted by Pat Grady and Lauren Reeder, Sequoia Capital
Mentioned in this episode:
CPQ: Configure, Price, Quote
Invent and Wander: Book by Jeff Bezos and Walter Isaacson
Foundations of Statistical Natural Language Processing: 1999 book by Chris Manning and Hinrich Schütze that Manny cites as a piece of AI content every AI founder should read. (still in print, companion site here)
The fox and the hedgehog:
Quandri
XBOW
HappyRobot
Owl
Crosby
--------
45:29
Arc Institute's Patrick Hsu on Building an App Store for Biology with AI
Patrick Hsu, co-founder of Arc Institute, discusses the opportunities for AI in biology beyond just drug development, and how Evo 2, their new biology foundation model, is enabling a broad ecosystem of applications. Evo 2 was trained on a vast dataset of genomic data to learn evolutionary patterns that would have taken years to find; as a result, the model can be used for applications from identifying mutations that cause disease to designing new molecular and even genome scale biological systems.
Hosted by Josephine Chen and Pat Grady, Sequoia Capital
Mentioned in this episode:
Sequence modeling and design from molecular to genome scale with Evo: Public pre-print of original Evo paper
Genome modeling and design across all domains of life with Evo 2: Public pre-print of Evo 2 paper
ClinVar: NIH database of the genes that are known to cause disease, and mutations in those genes causally associated with disease state
Sequence Read Archive: Massive NIH database of gene sequencing data
Machines of Loving Grace: Daria Amodei essay that Patrick cites on how AI could transform the world for the better
Arc Virtual Cell Atlas: Arc’s first step toward assembling, curating and generating large-scale cellular data from AI-driven biological discovery (among many other tools)
Protein Data Bank (PDB): a global archive of 3D structural information of biomolecules used by DeepMind to train AlphaFold
OpenAI Deep Research: The one AI app Patrick uses daily
--------
58:11
Replit CEO Amjad Masad on 1 Billion Developers: A Better End State than AGI?
Amjad Masad set out more than a decade ago to pursue the dream of unleashing 1B software creators around the world. With millions of Replit users pre-ChatGPT, that vision was already becoming a reality. Turbocharged by LLMs, the vision of enabling anyone to code—from 12-year-olds in India to knowledge workers in the U.S.—seems less and less radical. In this episode, Amjad explains how an explosion in the developer population could change the economy, society and more. He also discusses his early days programming in Jordan, his unique management approach and what AI will mean for the global economy.
Hosted by David Cahn and Sonya Huang, Sequoia Capital
Mentioned in this episode:
On the Naturalness of Software: 2012 paper on applying NLP to code
Attention Is All You Need: Seminal 2017 paper on transformers
I Am a Strange Loop: 2007 follow up to Douglas Hofstadter’s 1979 classic Gödel, Escher, Bach that explores how self-referential systems can describe minds
On Lisp: Paul Graham’s 1993 book on the original programming language of AI
--------
1:26:18
Why CRM Needs an AI Revolution, with Day.ai Founder Christopher O’Donnell
Christopher O’Donnell believes the fundamental problems with CRM—incomplete data, complex workflows, siloed work products and the fear of leads falling through the cracks—can finally be solved through AI. Founder of Day.ai and former Chief Product Officer of HubSpot, Christopher explains how his team is building a system that automatically captures the full context of customer relationships while giving users transparency and control. He shares lessons from building HubSpot’s CRM and why he’s taking a deliberate approach to product development despite the pressure to scale quickly in the AI era.
Hosted by Pat Grady, Sequoia Capital
Mentioned in this episode:
The Innovator's Dilemma: Classic book by Clay Christensen (referenced regarding HubSpot's second S-curve strategy)
Hubspot CRM: The only product to successfully challenge Salesforce’s dominance in the CRM category
From Super Mario Brothers to Elden Ring: Analogy to what an AI-powered CRM experience can be through comparison of video games launched in 1985 vs 2022
Punk’d: Hidden camera–practical joke reality television series that premiered on MTV in 2003, created by Ashton Kutcher and Jason Goldberg
Slow is smooth and smooth is fast: SEALs-derived concept mentioned regarding product development)
Aga stove (highlighted as extraordinary product design example)
Join us as we train our neural nets on the theme of the century: AI. Sonya Huang, Pat Grady and more Sequoia Capital partners host conversations with leading AI builders and researchers to ask critical questions and develop a deeper understanding of the evolving technologies—and their implications for technology, business and society.
The content of this podcast does not constitute investment advice, an offer to provide investment advisory services, or an offer to sell or solicitation of an offer to buy an interest in any investment fund.
Portugal